Senate Republicans are going into overdrive to combat Democrats’ claims about President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act that seek to make the law unpopular in the eyes of voters ahead of the midterms.
Republican Tennessee Sen. Marsha Blackburn highlighted sections of Trump’s signature legislation that she argues will boost take home-pay and avert a tax hike that would have shrunk most Americans’ pocketbooks in an interview with the Daily Caller News Foundation Wednesday. Blackburn said she’s already hearing from constituents who are excited about the tax relief provisions within the president’s signature bill, which she said will avert a $2,660 tax increase for the average Tennessee family next year and boost job creation in her state. (RELATED: Senate Scraps Controversial AI Moratorium In Overnight Voting Session)
No Senate Democrats voted for Trump’s signature bill. The White House Council of Economic Advisors estimates that passage of the legislation will result in at least $7,800 higher take-home pay for the average family with two children.
“As I talk to Tennesseans, they are very pleased with one big, beautiful bill,” Blackburn told the Daily Caller News Foundation in a Wednesday interview. “I was talking to a small business owner this week that said they had hired two people after the 2017 [Trump tax cuts] bill passed, and they were thrilled that those cuts were made permanent.”
Blackburn has vigorously pushed back on Senate Democrats’ claims that that the law’s reforms to Medicaid will leave Americans worse off and lead to tens of thousands of premature deaths.
🚨 SCHUMER on Big Beautiful Bill: “Tens of thousands will die.” pic.twitter.com/K5xXdtWEvM
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) July 9, 2025
The Tennessee Republican said the imposition of new Medicaid work requirements and tightening eligibility standards that bar illegal immigrants from receiving coverage will strengthen the program for those who need it most: pregnant women, children, the elderly and people with disabilities.
“Instead of telling the truth about how the One Big Beautiful Bill will improve life for Americans and Tennesseans, Democrats are resorting to fearmongering and lies,” Blackburn said in a statement following the interview.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune has also given short shrift to his Democratic colleagues’ alleged hysteria about the legislation’s potential consequences.
“These are scare tactics. This is the Democrat playbook,” Thune told Fox News’ Martha MacCallum Wednesday. “They’ve tried it over and over and over again.”
“I think the American people also believe that there ought to be work requirements for people who benefit from Medicaid or food stamps,” Thune continued.
Nearly 70% of Americans support Medicaid work requirements, according to the health policy firm KFF. The president’s bill specifically requires childless, able-bodied adults and those with teenagers to be working, seeking work, in school or volunteering for 20 hours a week in order to be eligible for Medicaid.
Blackburn, who is a member of the Senate panel that wrote the tax portion of the bill, helped secure a new $6,000 bonus deduction for seniors and a permanent raise in the child tax credit to $2,200 per child. She and members of the Senate finance panel also pushed for a permanent extension of several business tax breaks, which proponents argue will spur job growth and domestic manufacturing.
The Tennessee Republican is also taking a victory lap for successfully removing a controversial moratorium on state and local artificial intelligence (AI) regulation from the Senate version of the president’s budget package. She argued the freeze on state AI laws would prevent states from using their authority to protect their citizens from the harms of AI in the absence of federal legislation putting safeguard in place.
Blackburn’s amendment to strip the moratorium from the Senate bill was seen as a decisive defeat for Big Tech and influential voices on the Tech Right who lobbied hard for the measure. Senators overwhelmingly backed the effort, voting 99 to 1 to strike the provision during an overnight voting session.
“Those negotiations broke down because there was a difference in opinion on the language that needed to be struck from moratorium measure,” Blackburn told the DCNF. “And so at that point, the best thing for me to do was to move to strike the entire provision, and then let’s go back to the negotiating table and see if we can find a way to spur Congress to take action … on legislation protecting children and consumers and vulnerable populations in the virtual space.”
“My hope is that we will use this occurrence as a catalyst to move forward on federally preemptive legislation so that we develop national standards for these different components,” Blackburn added.
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